Try your hand a framing 3D art pieces!
It’s the finishing touch, and the hardest part. Finding wall art that you can live with and love for a long time is pretty challenging. Instead: frame something that has height, breadth and depth. An object, a natural element, a textile. Found items, framed, can be a classy addition to the look and feel of your home.
Michelle Crowley shares how to frame up and display 3D pieces.
Find and follow Michelle on Instagram @michellesdesignlife.
How to Make Unique 3D Art Pieces
It’s fun to frame up every day or random items and use them as art! Creating feature walls with something unexpected, especially when that something speaks to your interest and your personality can become a real showstopper in your home.
What kinds of things can you create big feature walls from? Well really there are no limits to the ideas of objects you can use or how you can display them, but I have a few ideas from my own home that I can share to help kick start some creative ideas of your own.
How to Choose and Display Dimensional and Random Items
- Choose items that represents something you have a particular interest in or that you love.
When our family spends time at our lake house we play a lot of games. Like A LOT of games. So when I was decorating the bunk room for that house I framed up a bunch of classic games. I had the kids set the games up like they were actually playing them and then we glued the pieces down using glue dots and hot glue and framed them so look like they’re being played – mid-game. I framed up 8 of them so they fill up a big wall in the room.
- Choose items that represent places you have been or experices you’ve had.
Our family loves to travel the world. It’s really my favorite thing to do. When we travel I pickup little items that will represent that country in my memory. Usually it’s something hand crafted or unique to that place in the world. I have framed some these things, such this mask from Africa. This one hangs in my husband’s office.
- Fabrics and textiles can make great art pieces and can be framed really large or really small.
At our lake house we had this big wall in the stair hall that I didn’t know what to do with. I thought I would eventually create a photo wall there. But I knew it would be awhile before I got around to doing that. So just as a place holder, I framed-up a bunch of left over fabric scraps from the pillows, draperies and furniture that’d I’d made for the house. It turned out so great that 14 years later my “place holder” is still there.
- Favorite Books
I collect illustrated children’s books. I love them, I still buy them even though I haven’t had littles in my house for years and years! But now I finally have a grandchild, so I have good excuse again for buying them. For my grandma nursery I am buying duplicates of some books so that I can tear out my favorite illustrations and frame them for a big feature wall of the art from my favorite children’s books. This one is still a work in progress. . . it’s going to be great!
- Something that’s Relevant
We have a house on Pineview Reservoir so there’s a lot of lake and sand at (in) our house. In our pool house there was this enormous, tall empty wall that needed to be filled with – something. For a long time I could not put my head around what to do with this big ol’ wall. One day I was out buying my flip-flops for the summer and this idea struck. The pool house is only used in the summer because – well – snow. So the decor for the pool house could be really summer specific. What says summer more than flip-flips? I wanted lots of color in the room and flip-flops come in lots of great colors!
I picked up really inexpensive, bright colored flip-flops and mounted them on burlap. I chose the burlap because it kinda give the idea of sand and it’s also this rough, natural texture that also feels kind of lake-ish and summery to me.
The frames are from Ikea, so not expensive, which was good because I needed a lot of them. I framed 12; 4 rows of 3, so they go edge to edge and floor to ceiling. It makes a huge, stop you in your tracks statement. And it was not expensive to pull off!
Tool Recommendation
Get yourself a point driver tool, which will help you secure and close up the back of your framing projects.
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